Romancing Opiates
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Product Description
Theodore Dalrymple believes that almost everything people know about opiate addiction is wrong. Most flawed of all is the notion that addicts are in touch with profound mysteries of which non-addicts are ignorant. Dalrymple shows that doctors, psychologists and social workers, all of them uncritically accepting addicts' descriptions of addiction, have employed literary myths (drugs are creative and intense) in constructing an equal and opposite myth of quasi-treatment. Using evidence from literature and pharmacology and drawing on examples from his own clinical experience, Dalrymple shows that addiction is not a disease, but a response to personal and existential problems. He argues that withdrawal from opiates is not the serious medical condition, but a relatively trivial experience and says that criminality causes addiction far more often than addiction causes criminality.
About the Author
Theodore Dalrymple is a psychiatrist and prison doctor who believes that everything most people know about opiate addiction.
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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Dalrymple's essay on the myths and deliberate lies surrounding heroin addiction is enjoyable, in parts amusing and largely accurate.
Heroin, as he suggests is a piece of cake to withdraw from, especially when compared to alcohol withdrawal. The very worst one might expect are symptoms similar to those of a nasty cold, perhaps with a bit of diarrhea thrown in. Alcoholics however, might have to contend with hallucinations, convultions and death. As a rule of thumb, no-one ever dies coming off heroin, plenty die coming off alcohol. However, it is in no-ones interest, not least the addict or the ubiquitous D & A worker to blow the gaff. Dalrymple explains why.
He also, interestingly, devotes time to methadone use as a pharmacological substitute for opiates. Has methadone killed more addicts than heroin? Perhaps it has.
I also enjoyed the examination of De Quincy and Coleridge, and their self serving descriptions of opiate use and addiction and its subsequent transference to popular culture. He thesis seems probable and is certainly intering.
However, towards the end of the book, Dalrymple seems to run out of steam. His call to shut all treatment agencies may of course be based on countless interactions with staple-faced, DM wearing, holier-than-thou 'workers', who it seems to me, after 10 years working with alcoholics, are attracted to the counter culture aspects of the work rather than anything else. And, I can understand how jaded he mnight be working with those people who, at best are a conduit for the addict (to get drugs) and are at worst actively harmful, in their idealogical "client driven" way,to their clients, their families and society at large.
But - Dalrymple either does not know of, or has not bothered to do research into agencies that do tell the addict exactly how it is. They may be few and far between, but assuredly, they do exist.
Heroin, as he suggests is a piece of cake to withdraw from, especially when compared to alcohol withdrawal. The very worst one might expect are symptoms similar to those of a nasty cold, perhaps with a bit of diarrhea thrown in. Alcoholics however, might have to contend with hallucinations, convultions and death. As a rule of thumb, no-one ever dies coming off heroin, plenty die coming off alcohol. However, it is in no-ones interest, not least the addict or the ubiquitous D & A worker to blow the gaff. Dalrymple explains why.
He also, interestingly, devotes time to methadone use as a pharmacological substitute for opiates. Has methadone killed more addicts than heroin? Perhaps it has.
I also enjoyed the examination of De Quincy and Coleridge, and their self serving descriptions of opiate use and addiction and its subsequent transference to popular culture. He thesis seems probable and is certainly intering.
However, towards the end of the book, Dalrymple seems to run out of steam. His call to shut all treatment agencies may of course be based on countless interactions with staple-faced, DM wearing, holier-than-thou 'workers', who it seems to me, after 10 years working with alcoholics, are attracted to the counter culture aspects of the work rather than anything else. And, I can understand how jaded he mnight be working with those people who, at best are a conduit for the addict (to get drugs) and are at worst actively harmful, in their idealogical "client driven" way,to their clients, their families and society at large.
But - Dalrymple either does not know of, or has not bothered to do research into agencies that do tell the addict exactly how it is. They may be few and far between, but assuredly, they do exist.
Format:Hardcover
Dalrymple writes from extensive experience, on a subject about which there is far more propaganda than true scientific discussion. Writing as a medical student, I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments about the over-empathasisation of this area from the medical profession. This is a fantastic book, presenting a well-argued and eloquent case against the 'standard view' of addiction.
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Perhaps the most interesting revelation in this book is that William Wilberforce, who led the revolt against the slave trade, was an opium addict. Got the job done, but he was an opium addict. One can only respond, so what? The trouble is that the writer has, by his own choice, overexposed himself to the world of addicts. He can no longer see that human beings have intrinsic worth, no matter what their behaviour. The whole book is a discussion of how frustrated he is with the world, with addicts, with his life as a doctor, and how the lies of the therapeutic community make everything worse. He even takes many pages to blame literature for glamorising drug use.
He looks at the real motive for taking drugs - life is crap. We're in an existential crisis and there is no answer. But is this assumption, the assumption that underlies the entire book, true? Where is the evidence? Wouldn't it be more true to say that the people who become heroin addicts have been born into absolutely hideous circumstances, have never been loved by anyone, and that love is what they really need? This writer doesn't love anyone or anything. His hatred for and judgement of humanity boils on every page. And that's his choice. I am so glad this is not my doctor.
He looks at the real motive for taking drugs - life is crap. We're in an existential crisis and there is no answer. But is this assumption, the assumption that underlies the entire book, true? Where is the evidence? Wouldn't it be more true to say that the people who become heroin addicts have been born into absolutely hideous circumstances, have never been loved by anyone, and that love is what they really need? This writer doesn't love anyone or anything. His hatred for and judgement of humanity boils on every page. And that's his choice. I am so glad this is not my doctor.
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